Month: September 2016

CHAPTER 1

September 28, 1978 The Papal Palace

Cardinal Jean Villot, Vatican secretary of state, had gotten hold of the list of appointments, resignations to be asked for, and transfers Pope John Paul I planned on putting into motion the next morning. There was one common denominator that linked each of the men about to be replaced … it was Freemasonry.

Villot was aware of each man’s affiliation to the Masons; more important, so was the Pope. It was the reason the Pope would strip these men of their power. Pope John Paul I had evidence indicating that within the Vatican City State, there were over one hundred Masons ranging from priests to cardinals. The Pope was further preoccupied with an illegal Masonic Lodge called Propaganda Due (P2), which had infiltrated far beyond even the Vatican in its search for wealth and power.

The fact that it had penetrated the Vatican walls and had converted priests, bishops, and even cardinals made P2 anathema, a formal ecclesiastical curse accompanied by excommunication.

The changes the Pope was intending on making would create, by any standards a dramatic reshuffle within the Vatican. It would set the church in a new direction, directions that Villot and others on the list considered dangerous for their movement.

On the morning of September 29, 1978 at 4:45 a.m., Sister Vicenza entered the papal apartments to bring the Holy Father his morning tea, only to find the lifeless body of the Pope. Fifteen minutes later at 5:00 a.m. it was reported that Cardinal Villot confirmed the death of the Pope. Only thirty-three days after his election, Pope John Paul I was dead.

Sister Vicenza gave two conflicting reports concerning the state in which she first found Pope John Paul I. According to a group of French priests that same morning, it was “in his bathroom” that she found the Holy Father dead, still in his papal robes. Later, after Cardinal Villot was present, she reported that upon entering the room she found the Pope sitting up in bed “with an expression of agony” before he died.

This small detail is significant. If it was true that Sister Vicenza found the Holy Father dead in the bathroom still in his papal robes, it could be construed that he died shortly after his “toast” with Cardinal Villot, the night of September 28, 1978.

That evening Villot hastily arranged for the embalming to be performed, a procedure as unusual as it was illegal, Villot also insisted that no blood was to be drained from the body, and neither were any of the organs to be removed. No official death certificate has ever been issued. No autopsy ever performed. Cause of death: Unknown.